PROCEEDINGS OF SOCIETIES. 331 



e;rees in the northern hemisphere), and most of which flourish only 

 within tlie tropics, is among the noblest and most splendid produc- 

 tions of the vegetable kingdom — early known and esteemed by the 

 ancients its very name became synonymous with plenty and exu- 

 berance, and attaches still to the city of Zenobia, whilst the majesty 

 of their form and the supassing grandeur of their port, obtained in 

 modern times from Linnteus the title of princes and patricians of the 

 vegetable kingdom. A well-known palm of Ceylon (the Talipot) 

 is described to be as big and as tali as a ship's mast, the leaves, some 

 of which are capacious enough to shelter thirty or forty men, form 

 a magnificent capital to the trunk, a stately column rising one hun- 

 dred feet in height. Until the last year of its life it is said to bear 

 no fruit, when, as if the perpetuation of its species appeared lo be 

 the end of its creation all the energies of the plant are developed in 

 a crown of glorious flowers — succeeded by fruit, and the tree, as if 

 exhausted by the effort, dies. 



Again, the date-palm of Arabia and Upper Egypt, (Phoenix dac- 

 tylifera fruni Phoenicia having produced the best dates, and dactyli- 

 fera, from the group of dates bearing some resemblance to the shape 

 of the hand,) to which our fossil fruit are allied — a tree of so much 

 value to man that, Gibbon tells us, the Eastern poets have celebrated 

 its 360 uses — has a woody stem, sometimes of considerable thickness 

 and of great length, surmounted b)' enormous masses of foliage, and 

 for 200 years will continue to bear fruit with the unabated vigour 

 of maturity. 



If this, then, were the character of the vegetation of the period 

 of our coal formation — if the earth were then planted with the ar- 

 boreous trunks, penetrated by the roots and shaded by the massy 

 foliage of the remarkable trees, why, it may with propriety be asked, 

 do we not produce better evidence of their existence, more substan- 

 tial relics than these the most insignificant, and it might be inferred, 

 the most perishable portions of their gigantic forms.'* 



Were we to turn over the sands of the desert which now sur- 

 rounds Palmyra, or dig into the alluvium of some neighbouring 

 stream, we might reasonably expect to find many relics of the palm 

 forest, which probably once embosomed that city, overthrown and 

 buried by the tornado or borne down by the torrent. And, indeed, 

 this is the sort of evidence of which we have abundance at the later 

 geological epochs. But up to this moment no palm wood — no leaves, 

 except the doubtful specimens before alluded to — and no other ves- 

 tige of the palm tree has ever been discovered connected with the 

 coal strata, except the interesting relics upon the table. We may 

 naturally expect, however, that the progress of discovery will fur- 

 nish us ere long, with more solid evidence, at present its absence is 

 one of the puzzles which geology so often presents. 



Now the mass of sandstone from which the fruit was extricated 



abounds in relics of the contemporary vegetation, vestiges of the 



most perishable living forms, converted into imperishable rock, their 



Kucculent stems now metamorphosed into an unyielding sandstone, 



VOL. VII., NO. xxii. vv 



